About

What is a good future city, and how do we create it?

This is the challenge set by OrganiCity, a three-year project spanning London, Santander and Aarhus. OrganiCity asks how can we make cities ‘smarter’ using digital technology, experimentation and co-creation with citizens.

Colouring-in the outlines

Colour-in City is one of 16 teams exploring this question. Our focus is on wellbeing and how we can use new digital technology to gather people’s stories and perceptions of everyday living.

We’re working with parents living in council-run social housing in one London neighbourhood. Together, we’ll explore how to equip citizens to colour-in the outlines of wellbeing data and shape support that works for them.

Get involved

This is a short experiment (November 2016 to February 2017) and we’re a small team of service designers, data experts, public sector providers and citizens.

While we’re starting small, we’re tackling big questions:

What do we mean by ‘wellbeing’?

How do we combine quantitative and qualitative data?

How can citizens not only produce data, but take an active role in using it to improve their own wellbeing?

Recent Posts

For four months, a mix of individuals with distinct and overlapping interests and expertise encompassing service design, data, and social innovation became a team, ‘Colour-in City’. We came together to experiment, to make, to learn. So, how did we do it? And would we do it again? ‘Building technologies can feel sterile. In this … Continue reading How do we make things together?

How can we collect and communicate wellbeing data that’s useful not only to policy makers, but to the people who generate it and the services who support them? We’re nearing the end of our involvement with OrganiCity, an EU-funded project that asks: how can we create good future cities using digital technology, data, co-creation and … Continue reading Making data meaningful

From reciprocity to respect; how our friendly chatbot is generating rich data, community connections and unexpected wellbeing outcomes. ‘Hello, hey, hi! My name’s Squeezy because I’m like a stress ball you can squeeeeeeeeze to get out some of your stress, worry or anxiety. I’m still a young ‘bot so please be patient with me. The … Continue reading ‘Hey there! Is this a good time for a chat?’

Knowledge and expertise traditionally filter from the top down when designing services and products. While this works for many commercial brands, in the social sector it can result in ideas that fail to meet the real needs of those they aim to serve. At Colour-in City we design for social impact by starting with people, … Continue reading Design makes us human. And it starts with a story…